An alliance of global key population-led networks, networks of people living with HIV, treatment activists, and our supporters, has formed to organize an alternative international community-led online event. Titled, HIV2020: Community Reclaiming the Global Response, the event is scheduled to take place on Zoom from July through October of 2020.

The HIV2020 alliance has decided to organize the community-led event to provide an alternative for individuals who cannot or will participate in the AIDS2020 virtual conference. Its goal is to offer new opportunities to reaffirm the leading role communities play in the global HIV response.

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Against the recommendations of community advocates worldwide, including the national networks of people living with HIV in the US, the International AIDS Society (IAS) chose the US as the site for its International AIDS Conference in 2020. Their decision created a dilemma for many in the global HIV movement and reveals a willingness by mainstream HIV actors to tolerate the discrimination of people from Middle Eastern, African, Caribbean and Latin American countries, people who use drugs, sex workers, transgender people in US immigration and travel policies.

The decision also resurfaced questions about the importance and community-relevance of large, multi-million-dollar conferences in the face of shrinking investment in the global HIV response. The costs of medicines and other barriers to HIV prevention, care, and treatment services like stigma, discrimination, violence, and criminalization, continue to plague the HIV response worldwide.

Check out the programme calednar and register for the event.

As we watch COVID-19 spread across the globe, we see a virus that must be stopped. Drawing from decades of work on HIV, we know that confronting this novel virus demands the same data-driven, evidence-based advocacy that has been at the center of our work with all of you for 25 years.

There are still a lot of unknowns—and many myths circulating—but the scientific community is working to advance our understanding of COVID-19 and develop potential treatments and vaccines. Understandably, this new disease also raises many questions about the implications for HIV research and the global communities of people affected by HIV.

On Monday, March 23 we were joined by Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, Director of the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) at the NIH, Lillian Mworeko of ICW-EA and Yvette Raphael of APHA, to answer questions about what we do and don’t know about COVID-19 and HIV, how to track research developments on the HIV front, what this new pandemic might mean for ongoing HIV research, and how the HIV community can contribute to the fight against COVID-19.

The recording can be found here.

The HIV advocacy community has a unique role to play in countering myths, developing an advocacy agenda that brings solutions to the people who need it most, and demanding those solutions be data-driven, evidence-based and centered in human rights.

In the weeks and months ahead, we encourage you to sort the myths and facts on COVID-19 with these resources, and to keep watching this space to engage with crucial developments.

On Thursday, April 2, AVAC held it second webinar on COVID-19 and its relationship to HIV. Dr. Mark Feinberg, CEO of IAVI, shared experiences and lessons from Ebola and HIV vaccine development that might be applied to COVID-19 vaccine development. Dr. Feinberg was joined by Dr. Helen Rees of Wits RHI to discuss the history and role of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which supports vaccine development against emerging infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

Listen

• Listen to the full recording (1:05:09)

Excerpts

• Mark Feinberg explores lessons from vaccine development in HIV and Ebola and relevance to COVID-19 (20:58)
• Helen Rees discusses the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations & the status of research for therapy for COVID-19 (11:48)
• Q&A: The science of partnership — A discussion about the vaccine development process and global coordination (6:41)
• Q&A: Why investment must be made now to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine at scale (8:50)
• Q&A: Helen Rees talks about the Solidarity study testing therapy for COVID-19 (5:11)
• Q&A: A discussion of mutation in the COVID-19 virus and how to sustain capacity to respond to epidemics (5:13)
• Q&A: Global health reframed, cooperation, openness & equity for both COVID-19 and HIV response (5:07)

Transcript

• Download the webinar transcript

On April 9, community engagement practitioners from Sub Saharan Africa discussed how COVID-19 is impacting ongoing clinical trials. While most clinical trials have paused enrollment to ensure participant and study teams safety and well-being. Most sites are continuing remotely with critical retention activities to uphold data integrity.

Professor Sinead Delany-Moretlwe of Wits RHI lead the discussion on how this pandemic is affecting clinical trials in Sub-Saharan Africa. She spoke on the implications COVID-19 has on data; the significance of each study visit and what happens when each visit is missed. Professor Delany-Moretlwe also presented an overview of some of the emerging COVID-19 related trials and their significance. During this webinar, various community engagement practitioners from Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa discussed the potential implications on data integrity and study results of ongoing trials, preparation for continued retention activities with participants and the use of virtual engagement strategies in a global pandemic.

Listen to the recording here.

On Thursday, May 7, AVAC held a webinar, The Power–and Pitfalls–of Modeling for COVID-19 and HIV, to discuss current COVID-19 models, and the benefits and limitations of mathematical models as they apply to both COVID-19 and HIV prevention.

In the fourth installment of AVAC’s webinar series on COVID-19 and its relationship to HIV, John Stover, Vice President and founder of Avenir Health, discussed the current state of COVID-19 modeling. Mr. Stover was joined by his Avenir colleague Nadia Carvalho who discussed a new learning opportunity for advocates wishing to use modeling in their work. This online course was developed by Avenir as part of the Coalition to Accelerate & Support Prevention Research (CASPR) led by AVAC and supported by USAID.

Recording and Slides: YouTube / Avenir’s slides

The transcript of the Webinar Q&A can also be found here.

To learn more about modeling, check out this brief on Understanding COVID-19 Mathematical Models.

The HIV2020 Conference has been reimagined as a series of virtual convenings that will take place June through October of this year.

HIV2020 Online will draw from the top-scoring, peer-reviewed program proposals we received from last year’s call for Expressions of Interest. In lieu of face-to-face meetings, these virtual sessions will include live-streamed keynote addresses from leaders in the field, panel presentations led by community advocates and community-led service providers, and virtual discussion rooms aligned with the HIV2020 themes of affinity, intersectionality, and solidarity. This ongoing virtual event will continue to reaffirm the leading role that communities play in the global response to HIV.

Given HIV2020’s focus on people living with HIV, gay and bisexual men, people who use drugs, sex workers, and transgender people, the virtual series will start in June with sessions aligned with the theme of affinity. Sessions will highlight the need to create space for civil society and showcase issues facing our communities. Although the event will no longer take place in Mexico City, many of our sessions will still highlight the priorities and needs of advocates in Latin America.

All virtual sessions offered as part of the HIV2020 Online series will be entirely FREE and made available as recordings online. Translation will also be available for all sessions in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Russian.

Six months? A year? Longer? Never? How long until there’s a vaccine against COVID-19? How is COVID vaccine research moving so quickly? How do HIV vaccine and COVID-19 vaccine research relate and inform each other? How do we ensure COVID research happens quickly and ethically?

As we approach HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD) on May 18, these questions are driving how we think about the ever-evolving global advocacy agenda.

On Wednesday, May 13, we conducted a webinar with Jon Cohen, one of the leading journalists covering both HIV and COVID. Jon is a Science staff writer, award-winning journalist and author of Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine. Jon discussed the rapidly growing pipeline of COVID vaccine candidates and shared insights on how the HIV vaccine field has laid the groundwork for this — along with how COVID research can contribute to the ongoing search for an HIV vaccine.

We also discussed some of the thornier issues emerging in COVID research: the WHO issued a report stating that well-designed “human challenge” studies could accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development. The report articulates important criteria for assessing a challenge study, but they left out the most important one: Until there is an approved treatment, a challenge trial with a potentially fatal and as-yet untreatable pathogen is unacceptable. See AVAC and TAG’s statement on the report here.

Recording and Slides: YouTube / Slides